"Ego" as a master trait : an investigation of women's sex-role identification, attitudes toward women, and achievement motivation, as they relate to conforming ego development

The purpose of this study was to examine whether sex-role identification, attitudes toward women, and achievement motivation would discriminate between women at the lower and the higher levels within the Conforming period of ego development. This discriminating ability was conceived of as being consistent with the concept of the ego as a "master trait". It seemed likely that sane discriminant factor/s of women's behavior would distinguish those women who, though they had not yet exited a period of development identified as "Conforming", had further developed themselves as more unique persons than had other "conforming" women from the same sample of an educationally homogeneous population. A review of the professional literature supported this study's purpose. Loevinger (1970, 1976) suggested that the "ego" is a master trait which encompasses an individual's worldview and subsumes many other attitudes. She theorized that individuals in the lower levels of the Conforming period of ego development have mere traditional values and are more supportive of the current predominant societal expectations about behavior and attitudes. Specifically, Hoppe (1972) found a non-linear relationship between conforming behavior and conforming ego development, with a maximum of conformity within the lower levels of the Conforming period of ego development. Block (1973) discussed, in theory, the integration of changes in sex-role identification within a framework of ego development levels. She described sex-role levels of conformity which parallel Loevinger's lower conforming levels of the Conforming period of development. In addition, both attitudes toward women and achievement motivation (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) have been neaningfully related to degree of conformity to sex-role definitions. [...]